Profit caps disincentivize companies to be efficient, meaning they'll just waste resources that could be used better elsewhere in the economy. Capping price or profit does nothing to address the root cause of the problem - lack of competition. Lack of competition could be addressed by finding ways to reduce regulatory hurdles to enter the market, or by breaking up monopolies with anti-trust action.
You got laid off because they dont need you. I understand how traumatic and life destroying it can be sometimes, but long term it destroys the future of overall population, to prevent firing people who are no longer necessary.
We’d all be stuck as farmers, tailors and wood cutters, if firing people was penalised or efficiency was punished, no one would want to make their company more efficient with wood cutting machines or sewing machines, or tractors for farming, etc.
In a small timeframe it is horrible to lose a job, but the state is responsible for protecting both the future generations balanced with comfort and safety of present population.
A affordable unemployment insurance is a much better idea tbh compared to profit caps or price caps.
Good luck tho!, may you get a great job soon. May god bless you.
The prohibition should stand. People should have a voluntary option to pay or not pay for services as they choose. Except I suppose in quite exceptional circumstances.
If a group of locals want to pool their cash and start up a local broadband service then good on them, best of luck. But taxpayers shouldn't be on the hook to help them.
USPS is an example. It's sort of a public utility that has some strange requirements, like it _must_ __offer__ service to everyone. In some places this is less profitable, and private postal / shipping firms might not even offer their own service (or pay USPS for the last leg instead).
However, because USPS exists, there is a ceiling to how much other firms can charge without differentiating their services to make it worth the difference in cost. It helps ensure the market functions with proper competition.
For any other market where distortion (dysfunctional market) is observed, the solution is not to mandate the impossible from the existing players, but to modify the market conditions where they are broken.
Say we have a Centiville, a conveniently sized community of 100 people. 90 of them want municipal broadband because they like the internet.
That 90% should be allowed to pool their resources, start a "Centiville Fibre" company, build out fibre locally and charge locals a fair rate. Then the remaining 10 don't have to be involved in something they don't want. Or they can pay market rate for it without getting a dividend, which is effectively a penalty.
No government involvement required outside maybe permitting. The people who want it pay, it probably happens faster and all is good.
> And they want their tax money to go to something actually useful for them.
They're going to have their taxes raised to pay for the installation costs. Doing it through the government doesn't mean there is more money (unless they're harvesting resources off people who think it is a bad idea / don't want it / can't afford it which is unfair).
I don’t have children but I still pay for the schools. The idea that your tax dollars should only get spent on something you use personally is laughable.
Well, yes. But that is a straw man because nobody argued that.
Taxpayers shouldn't be forced to pay for things that they don't use and don't think are good ideas. If you use it, you should pay for it. If you think it is a good idea, you should pay for it. But if people think something is a bad idea they should only have to pay for it under highly exceptional circumstances.
There is no need to force people to pay for broadband. This is a problem that a company can solve using voluntary action.
What straw man is constructed here? There are people who don’t think they should pay for schools with their taxes. There are people who literally are advocating to instead be paid to not use public schools at all.
Many people strongly disagree about the places their tax dollars go. It is maybe one of the single most common complaints people utter and this is an example of it? People are able to make decisions about where their tax dollars go but only in the abstract of collective action via legislation. It’s kind of how governments work on a fundamental level and most of politics is about where the tax dollars go.
If a strong majority of people choose to do something as a municipality, that is the system at work. Sorry to the 10% of people who think they’re getting a bad deal (and are also almost certainly wrong on an objective level unless they just don’t want internet at all).
The suggestion that instead a private enterprise should be spun up for it so they can choose to not subscribe is the antithesis of the entire point. The entire point is that the cost is already beared by the taxpayers in the first place and that it should serve them. It makes more sense to invest directly in the creation and keep it in the hands of those who bore the cost. We give billions out in corporate welfare and yet the companies who get that money are quite often the most reviled in the nation based on public polling (Telcos). It is almost like the incentives aren’t aligned.
The idea that your tax dollars should only get spent on something you use personally is laughable - I'm not arguing that.
> The entire point is that the cost is already beared by the taxpayers in the first place and that it should serve them...
Well, having the taxpayers pay for it is obviously failing. Maybe try not taking the money off people and letting them build their own broadband? If you've identified that something the government is doing isn't working, the first port of call is try privatising it. The private market is pretty good at providing things.
Getting local government to do something instead of state or federal is an improvement; but by golly you could just have the people who want something organise to have what they want without dragging the unwilling in to it. 90% vs 100% of local people paying for something doesn't really make a difference to the underlying economics.
> If a strong majority of people choose to do something as a municipality, that is the system at work. Sorry to the 10% of people who think they’re getting a bad deal (and are also almost certainly wrong on an objective level unless they just don’t want internet at all).
No that isn't the system at work, that is the system failing. Taking a system that could work with just a motivated minority organising it and changing it to a system where everyone has to vote on it at regular intervals is a recipe for failure. If a strong majority wants something, they have all the tools they need to do it themselves at their own cost. The only reason they even need a majority is to push any obstructionist permitting and whatnot out of the way.
> We give billions out in corporate welfare and yet the companies who get that money are quite often the most reviled in the nation based on public polling (Telcos).
A sensible take there is to not make paying them compulsory? I get what you're saying but I don't get how you aren't joining the dots. You start by saying that some people are going to have to pay for something they don't want. You then get to the conclusion and you've identified that people are being forced to pay for something they don't want and that is bad.
There is an easy solution to all this. Stop forcing people to fund things they think are bad ideas, then let the people who want broadband band together, set up a limited liability corporation to control the legal risk, and build themselves a broadband network. IE, get government out of the picture as much as possible. Then literally everyone gets what they want. If someone changes their mind later they aren't a shareholder and will end up having to give money to the people with more foresight.
Similarly. If someone wants to go off the grid there isn't any reason to force them on to it. Ditto water supplies if they want to try something alternative. And they shouldn't have to pay for a service they aren't connected too because that would be dumb. I'd probably advocate a law that you have to disclose being unconnected to major utilities clearly, obviously and early in the process when selling or renting a house.
I don't really see why anyone should be unhappy if Sam the Solar wants to power his own house. Good luck to him. He doesn't have to pay for my electricity and I don't have to pay for his. If it is much more cost effective for him he can come do my house too. There is literally no need to force them to pay or force them to consume a service that they don't think it a good idea.
And the closer the equilibrium can be pushed to a fully private free market the more cost effective it is likely to be.
Example: Germany’s mostly-public (Gesetzliche - more like, extremely strictly regulated) health insurance system putting a market-based cap on what private (more like, more lightly-regulated) insurance can cost and cover.
I was on the private system my first 13 years working in Germany. I was obligated (but didn’t try to fight) switch to public recently.
I'm all for government 'competition' so long as they play by the rules of the market. If government 'competition' means a money-losing (i.e. tax-supported) enterprise, then it's not competition, it's just price-setting with extra steps.
cost-plus has largely proved to be a busted business model. in industries where it is de rigueur, such as defense and space, traditional business models have driven efficiency improvements and new product development alongside price decreases.
I’ve always suspected that that incentivized health insurance companies to let hospitals inflate costs. If the government forbids me from increasing my percentage of the pie and I need to increase revenue I have to increase the size of the pie.
Yes, this and vertical integration. The insurance company may have limited profit, but if the hospital doesn't, and they're both owned by the same parent company, then the prices "inside the control volume" can be whatever fiction is most convenient to report to the government.
Looked up the largest health insurer, they operate hospitals:
> Kaiser Permanente operates 39 hospitals and more than 700 medical offices, with over 300,000 personnel, including more than 87,000 physicians and nurses.
